What Is an Effective Dominoes Strategy?

Learning to mentally add and subtract from the board is one effective strategy in dominoes that improves vigilance and helps in recognizing opportunities that open up during play. Depending on the evolution of the game, being able to silently add and subtract mentally can make the difference between winning and losing.

Keeping a low board count is a defensive dominoes strategy that is used when the player is losing, and it is important to prevent the adversary from gaining a larger lead. Controlling the initiative is an offensive strategy achieved by scoring points and preventing the adversary from scoring on his turn since there are only four tiles that can be used to score immediately after.

If the tiles zero-zero, five-five, zero-five and one-six are in the possession of the player, the board can be raised as high as possible. By using those tiles, a constant scoring streak can be achieved.

Blocking the board is also a defensive strategy, and it is achieved by making the available hook ends identical, thereby causing the opponent to keep drawing tiles. The one short count is an offensive strategy designed to score by noticing when the board is off by one point, which is either above or below the scoring goal. There are a total of 13 tiles that can score when the board is one off, and the most efficient is a four-nine grouping and adding a six tile at the end.